Anne Conway was an extraordinary figure in a remarkable age. Her mastery of the intricate doctrines of the Lurianic Kabbalah, her authorship of a treatise criticising the philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, and her scandalous conversion to the despised sect of Quakers indicate a strength of character and independence of mind wholly unexpected in a woman at the time. Translated for the first time into modern English, her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy is the most interesting (...) and original philosophical work written by a woman in the seventeenth century. Her radical and unorthodox ideas are important not only because they anticipated the more tolerant, ecumenical, and optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment, but also because of their influence on Leibniz. This fully annotated edition includes an introduction which places Conway in her historical and philosophical contexts, together with a chronology of her life and a bibliography. (shrink)

Anne Conway’s Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, first published in 1690, is probably the most ambitious contribution to early modern metaphysics by a woman writing in the English language. This beautifully prepared edition makes Conway’s treatise available to twentieth-century readers in an accessible English translation of the 1690 Latin text—itself a translation of an original English manuscript that has long been lost.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Enthusiastical Concerns of Dr. Henry More: Religious Meaning and the Psychology of Delusion by Daniel C. FoukeAllison P. CoudertDaniel C. Fouke. The Enthusiastical Concerns of Dr. Henry More: Religious Meaning and the Psychology of Delusion. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997. Pp. xi + 257. Cloth, $93.75.In this detailed examination of Henry More’s psychological explanation of enthusiasm, Daniel C. Fouke persuasively argues that previous discussions of seventeenth-century attitudes toward (...) enthusiasm have been marred by misplaced attempts to categorize them in terms of “rationalism,” “empiricism,” and the “new science.” As he says, “a central problem in every account is that anti-enthusiasts and their targets simply refuse to ally themselves according to commitments which, to our eye, should sort them into well-defined genealogies, neat schools, and clear enmities. Clear battle-lines fail to emerge, and any portrait of the typical ‘enthusiast’ never gets so far as a bare outline” (122). The ample evidence he offers to support this point appears in the three main sections of his book, in which he analyzes More’s attack on two types of scientific “enthusiasm,” alchemy, represented by Thomas Vaughan, and the mechanical philosophy, and on the religious and political enthusiasm of radical sects, represented primarily by the Quakers.Fouke points out how similar More’s own views are in many respects to the enthusiasts he excoriates, and he illustrates how tendentious and often unfair his criticisms are. For example, More viciously attacks Thomas Vaughan for his vitalistic, organic view of the natural world when he himself holds similar views. And he later attacks the mechanical philosophers for rejecting the kind of vitalism he had earlier attacked in Vaughan, while chiding them for ignoring the sympathetic effects he had detected with such repugnance in Vaughan.The same inconsistencies and misrepresentations hold true of More’s attack on the Quakers. He criticizes them for relying on the “Inner Light,” when he himself had used the same expression and adhered to the same conviction that religion was a matter of inner experience not outward observance.In both his attack on scientific and religious enthusiasm, More descends, as Fouke amply shows, to a level of ad hominem vituperation at odds with his professed tolerance and good manners. By attributing all enthusiasm to physical disorders, which, in More’s view, arise primarily from carnality and lust, More effectively stigmatized and even demonized his opponents (since the devil was masterful at using physical disorders for his nefarious purposes).What accounts for More’s harshness and inconsistencies? Fouke argues, again persuasively, that one must view More’s attacks on enthusiasm in the context of the political and religious upheavals of the time and in terms of his own metaphysical and cultural outlook. As Fouke points out, all attacks on enthusiasm involved the larger issue of authority. Where should one look for guidance—to the State, the Church, the individual? More was a traditionalist, who deplored the political and religious anarchy of the Civil Wars and Interregnum. But although he was a political conservative and traditionalist, he too had been influenced by religious radicals and believed that an individual’s religion must be heartfelt and not a matter of ritual compliance. In essence More’s attack on enthusiasm was basically an attempt to legitimize his own theology, anthropology, and natural philosophy in the name of an indisputable, higher, religious [End Page 467] authority. The irony of More’s position was that in vilifying enthusiasm and attributing it to insanity, More’s writings became a useful resource in the armory of the deists, materialists and atheists, who were his real targets.Fouke is especially interested in analyzing what he describes as the “poetic source” of More’s attack on enthusiasm. As he says at the beginning of his book:I will argue that More and his “enthusiastical” opponents were offering competing ideals of religious meaning which they expressed by singling out particular kinds of experience as types of religious and moral cognition. I will also show that they differed in their account of the “crisis” experience which provides entry to the spiritual life, grounding this experience in competing theoretical, narrative, and poetical contexts. I will... (shrink)

The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that, celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” Tony (...) Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone, we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them. Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them. (shrink)

The paper considers the intellectual computer mathematics system InparSolver, which is designed to automatically explore and solve basic classes of computational mathematics problems on multi-core computers with graphics accelerators. The problems of results reliability of solving problems with approximate input data are outlined. The features of the use of existing computer mathematics systems are analyzed, their weaknesses are found. The functionality of InparSolver, some innovative approaches to the implementation of effective solutions to problems in a hybrid architecture are described. Examples (...) of applied usage of InparSolver for processes mathematical modeling in various subject areas are given. Nowadays, new more complex objects and phenomena in many subject areas are constantly emerging, which are subject to mathematical research on a computer. This encourages the development of new numerical methods and technologies of mathematical modeling, as well as the creation of more powerful computers for their implementation. With the advent and constant development of supercomputers of various architectures, the problems of their effective use, expansion of tasks range should be solved, ensuring the reliability of computer results and increasing the level of intellectual information support for users ‒ specialists in various fields. Today, the issues of solving these problems are given special attention by many specialists in the fields of information technology and parallel programming. The world's leadingscientists in the field of computer technology see the solution to the problems of efficient usage of modern supercomputers in algorithmic software creation that easily adapts to different computer architectures with different types of memory and coprocessors, supports efficient parallelism on millions of cores etc. In addition, improving the efficiency of high-performance computing on modern supercomputers is provided by their intellectualization, transferring to the computer to perform a significant part of the functions. The industry of development and usage of intelligent computer technologies is one of the main directions of science and technology development in modern society. (shrink)

Lenin's work "On the Significance of Militant Materialism," written in the spring of 1922, is justly regarded as the philosophical testament of our leader. In it, the tasks of the day were merged with the tasks of the entire epoch on the basis of a profound analysis of reality.

Dio-Xiphilinus, Herodian, and the Historia Augusta give three apparently contradictory accounts of the circumstances in which Commodus' all-powerful praetorian prefect, Sex. Tigidius Perennis, was overthrown in A.D. 185. My purpose here is not to try to decide between them, but primarily to correct what I think a patent misinterpretation, now current, of a crucial statement in that given by Xiphilinus in his epitome of Dio.

All projects take place within a context of uncertainty. That is especially noticeable in complex hydroelectric power generation projects, which are affected by factors such as the large number of multidisciplinary tasks to be performed in parallel, long execution times, or the risks inherent in various fields like geology, hydrology, and structural, electrical, and mechanical engineering, among others. Such factors often lead to cost overruns and delays in projects of this type. This paper analyzes the efficiency of the Earned Value (...) Management technique and its Earned Schedule extension, as means of forecasting costs and deadlines when applied to complex hydroelectric power production projects. It is worth noting that this analysis was based on simulation models applied to real-life projects. The results showed that cost forecasting becomes very accurate over time, whereas duration forecasting is not reliably accurate. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate a number of analytical solutions to the polynomial class of nonlinear Klein-Gordon equations in multidimensional spacetime. This is done in the context of classical φ4 and φ6 field theory, the former with and without the inclusion of an external force field conjugate to φ. Both massive (m≠0) and massless (m=0) cases are considered, as well as tachyonic solutions allowed (v>c). We first present a complete set of translationally invariant solutions for the φ4 model and demonstrate (...) the role of external force fields in altering the form of these solutions. Next, spherically symmetric solutions are discussed in both φ4 and φ6 cases since they provide the most realistic models of elementary particles. (shrink)

Even though Plamondon's kinematic model fits the data well, we do not share the view that it explains movements other than ballistic ones. The model does not account for closed-loop control, which is the more common type of movement in everyday life, nor does it account for recent data indicating interference with ongoing processing.

This paper explores the Offence Principle. It discusses whether two constraints, additional to the criteria stated in conventional analysis, ought to be met before the Offense Principle can be satisfied: (i) that offensive conduct must be a wrong, and (ii) that the conduct must also lead to harm. The nature of the Harm Principle, and its relationship to the Offense Principle, are also considered. The paper suggests that, even if all cases in which offense should be criminalized also involve harm, (...) nonetheless there may be good reasons to retain a separate Offense Principle. (shrink)